Dingman Center for Entrepreneurship

Meet the 5 Startups Competing in Friday’s Pitch Dingman Competition

The last Pitch Dingman Competition of the school year will take place this Friday, May 3 at 11 a.m. in Tyser Auditorium, Van Munching Hall. Five ambitious student startups from the University of Maryland will compete for the chance to win $2,500 in startup funding. After the pitches, attendees will vote to award their favorite startup $500 for the Audience Choice Award. After the competition, students can stay for an entrepreneurial mixer where we will celebrate another successful year of Pitch Dingman. Lunch will be provided! You can RSVP to attend Pitch Dingman here.

To get you ready for Friday, here’s a little preview of our finalists:

Cart NoodlesTeam: Hon laam Fung

Our mission is to provide affordable and authentic Hong Kong styled cuisine served in a fast and convenient manner tailored towards college students. With all ingredients ready and cooked, customers only need to specify what they want in their order, and the time they spend waiting is however long it takes to move through line. In less than three minutes, the transaction is complete and the consumers enjoy gourmet soup noodles with a price lower than anywhere on campus.

Imagine a future where all you have to do to smell great is put on your earrings. Sweet Buds allows for a functional and worry free way to smell great throughout the day. Our innovative idea revolutionizes the way you wear perfume by conveniently placing it in your earring backing. The perfume releases when our customer puts on the earring and punctures the plastic backing. The perfume then diffuses slowly from the opening allowing the user to smell great all day. This will change the way people wear perfume.

BOVER is an E-commerce platform that connects small-scale farmers with large scale retailers. Our system uses SMS technology paired with a web-based marketplace to enable small scale and low yielding farmers to aggregate their yields, and sell at a fair market price to small and large buyers. The mobile application and website will work in tandem to streamline agricultural value chains around the world. The project’s innovation lies in its ability to move the agriculture value chain towards the 21st Century by increasing transparency and promoting modernization

Vitus

As a practicing veterinarian, I can say with complete confidence that the way we share medical information in the pet industry is broken and outdated. At Vitus, we will use modern IT to create innovative, web-based personal health records for pets that will help veterinarians grow their practice, improve hospital efficiency, and save lives.

Terpiture is a furniture rental business created to help make the move-in and move-out process smooth for both students and their parents. Having Terpiture on campus will be an asset exclusive to the Maryland community, making students’ time here more enjoyable.The great thing about Terpiture is that it’s very simple and easily accessible. It will be available via social networking, texting, and email, which will make the students’ experience even more personal than having to deal with a large corporation.